Category: Articles
Article
Jurisdictional Elements and the Jury
G. Alexander Nunn, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law
Do jurisdictional elements in criminal statutes actually matter? Of course, formally, the answer is obvious; jurisdictional elements are of paramount importance. In fact, they often serve as the entire justifying basis for a federal (rather than state) criminal prosecution. But beyond mere technicalities, do jurisdictional elements actually make a difference in a jury deliberation room?…
Apr 2022
Article
Systematically Important Platforms
Caleb N. Griffin, Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas School of Law
Regulating Big Tech is now a matter of intense public debate. We ask how well Big Tech companies fulfill their role as gatekeepers of the public square. We ponder whether their dominant market positions merit an antitrust response. We assess their culpability and complicity in spreading online misinformation and hate. However, in the many normative…
Apr 2022
Article
Deregulated Redistricting
Travis Crum, Associate Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis
From the civil rights movement through the Obama administration, each successive redistricting cycle involved ever greater regulation of the mapmaking process. But in the past decade, the Supreme Court has rewritten the ground rules for redistricting. For the first time in fifty years, Southern States will redistrict free of the pre clearance process that long…
Apr 2022
Article
Is Unpublished Unequal? An Empirical Examination of the 87% Nonpublication Rate in Federal Appeals
Rachel Brown, Jade Ford, Sahrula Kubie, Katrin Marquez, Bennett Ostdiek & Abbe R. Gluck, Yale Law School Class of 2020
Federal judges resolved more than eighty-seven percent of appeals through unpublished opinions over the past five years. These dispositions are non-precedential and typically contain abbreviated reasoning. Such high rates of nonpublication may be difficult to reconcile with the core values of the federal judiciary—values grounded in precedent, reason-giving, and equal treatment. After intense attention to…
Apr 2022
Article
When Patients Are Their Own Doctors: Roe v. Wade in an Era of Self-Managed Care
Yvonne Lindgren, Associate Professor of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City. J.S.D, LL.M., U.C. Berkeley School of Law; J.D., Hastings College of Law; B.A., U.C.L.A.
It is a critical time to re-examine the gatekeeper framing of the abortion right considering the dramatic conservative shift in the Supreme Court that threatens Roe, and in the midst of a pandemic, which—in a complete reversal of the Roe period—renders in-person care by a provider potentially dangerous. In January, the Supreme Court’s first abortion…
Apr 2022
Article
Protecting Dissent: The Freedom of Peaceful Assembly, Civil Disobedience, and Partial First Amendment Protection
Nick Robinson & Elly Page, Senior Legal Advisors at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law
Protesters in the United States frequently engage in peaceful unlawful conduct, or civil disobedience, such as blocking traffic or trespass. Often citing to the First Amendment, authorities will routinely decline to arrest or prosecute this nonviolent conduct or do so for lesser offenses than they could. This treatment, though, can vary considerably by location, issue,…
Apr 2022
Article
Distributed Federalism: The Transformation of Younger
Anne Rachel Traum, Professor of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
For decades federal courts have remained mostly off limits to civil rights cases challenging the constitutionality of state criminal proceedings. Younger abstention, which requires federal courts to abstain from suits challenging the constitutionality of pending state prosecutions, has blocked plaintiffs from bringing meritorious civil rights cases and insulated local officials and federal courts from having…
Feb 2022
Article
Renaming Deadly Force
Scott A. Harman-Heath, J.D. University of Virginia, B.A. McGill University
Three times a day in the United States, a police officer kills someone. On any given day, this person might be an active shooter, a hostage-taker, or a bomber. But on that same day police might also kill a motorist reaching for his license (Philando Castile), someone selling loose cigarettes (Eric Garner), someone who used…
Feb 2022
Article
The State Courts Don’t Have Time for Your Crackpot Antiquarianism: A Decade of Domestic Homicides Since Giles V. California
Caren Myers Morrison, Associate Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law
How Giles v. California would affect domestic violence cases was hotly debated within the case itself and in the literature that followed. This article presents the first comprehensive review of the 114 domestic homicide cases since Giles in which there was an intimate relationship between the victim and the accused,11. The vast majority of the…
Nov 2021
Article
Elder Financial Abuse: Capacity Law and Economics
Ben Chen, Lecturer in Law (Assistant Professor equivalent), The University of Sydney
Elder financial abuse is an alarming problem in this era of aging population. Baby boomers are entering retirement with a higher life expectancy and more wealth than any generation before them. The combination of mental decline and substantial wealth renders many seniors vulnerable to overreach. In private suits alleging elder financial abuse, courts often apply…
Nov 2021
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